updated 12:15 pm EST, Thu December 13, 2007

New Apple Cinema Displays?

Apple may be on the verge of updating its Cinema Displays, speculation suggests. The company pulled the stand-alone LCD monitors from prominent mention on its online store Wednesday night, relegating them to the Displays section under Mac Accessories. While Apple may be putting the monitors aside simply to market bigger products during the holidays, the company has also traditionally taken such steps before the release of a product update.

How Apple would upgrade its Cinema Displays is unknown, but in order to keep pace with both the latest iMacs and LCD monitors in general, the company may decide to include a built-in iSight camera, new trim, and/or an HDMI port, which would let viewers connect devices like game consoles or HD movie players. LED backlighting is a possibility, but is normally reserved for notebooks. The arrival of new monitors would likely coincide with next month's Macworld Expo. [viaZDNet]

Why bother?

Apple monitors made more sense when they had high-volume desktops to use them with.. Why should they even bother refreshing anything smaller than a 30" (which given the pricing on a Mac Pro is probably what design houses would be happy to buy)?

@otiswild

I agree with you man. The Apple displays are overpriced and have no real market. If they focused on large scale displays and forgot about the small ones (20"/22") and went to new displays starting at 30"+ that would be smart.

Who needs to buy a really overpriced display for a Mini? I sure wouldn't.

Were premium, but aren't

Early on the Apple displays were known for color quality and consistency. This being defined as uniformity of the backlight, and good greyscale/color tracking. Even at their release they were on the higher end of color quality. They have since slipped from being premium monitors to premium priced monitors. From a features standpoint, they lag most notably in terms of gamut, contrast, and input flexibility (both from a connections and hardware scaling standpoint). LED backlights are most commonly used to extend the gamut of and LCD display. The reduced energy consumption is a fringe benefit that has only recently been taken advantage of in notebook displays. It has not been the primary benefit of this backlight tech, contrary to the statement in the text.

pleeeeease

Please make this FINALLY be true! I've been WAITING for Apple to release new monitors for the past year or two. My old Mitsubishi Diamond Pro monitor is set to die.

Actually, a lot of people want Apple monitors. Whether for use with Mac Pro, MacBook Pro or even a mini. Don't forget that iMacs now support multiple monitors.

Me? I really want a 24" (assuming that there's a 24" to match the iMac) Apple monitor to use with my MacBook Pro. Aesthetics aside, I mostly want the built-in FireWire and USB ports that Apple monitors have. It's GOT to have a fast refresh rate (4ms)! A built-in iSight would be a bonus.

But Still

First, FYI, they've been off the store's main page for over a month now.

The one thing I appreciate as a photographer is the color accuracy. No futzing, you can trust that it's dead on.

At the 30"-size, however, it'd make sense to add on some more video inputs for things like hi def players and TV. You paid for all those pixels, so why not get to use them as your workhorse display for everything.

Even as far as used displays go, these are excellent quality. It's too bad you rarely, if ever see their price drop below $1k on eBay.

Perhaps with the upcoming HD boom, we'll see large-format display components drop dramatically in price, and a large price drop in Apple displays.

Also

Let's not forget Apple's recent patents on touch screens. Imagine what you can do with a touch display that large! That is the graphic artist's/architect's dream to be able to work directly on the surface instead of using a mouse or pen tablet interface.

I know that Boeing currently uses their 30" displays with touch capabilities for the heads-down displays in simulator cockpits, so we know it's possible. The question is, would the idea be mass-marketable?

Re: were premium

Are you talking from actual experience comparing? I don't know what magic cheap but good monitors you found that compare to Apple's but I certainly haven't been able to find any.

The cheap LCD monitors boast about high contrast, wide viewing angles, but then if you shift your viewing angle slightly, it's still bright but white becomes yellow, blues fade, etc. To get a comparable quality to an Apple display you will spend as (or almost as) much as the Apple display. On the off chance that a third party display is on sale, if you can't view it in person, you can't be sure that it is as good - there doesn't seem to be a good published spec for colour accuracy.

re: pleeeease

Jeff, that's funny. I'm in the exact same boat. My Mitsu Diamond Pro is also on its last leg and I've been holding out for new Cinema displays. I just hope Apple will deliver the quality this time, instead of being beat out on performance by Dell et al.

Crazy rumors...

Every time something changes at the Apple store, it as if Apple is revamping it's product line.

It's just that everybody is starved for changes. However, there are probably no monitor changes for a while. Chances are somebody would have spotted supply line changes in Asia. I wouldn't think the whole monitor line-up change would have gone unnoticed.

Please please me!

I was disappointed with the new shiny iMac screens so to replace my faithful PowerMac G4 and 20" Apple LCD monitor I am looking at the supposed January release of new Pro's and a larger refresh of monitors. My 20" has served me well and is still bright and crisp, however I would pass it along with the old PowerMac if there was new monitor released.